


Haunted House

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Ghostbusters (Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-21
Updated: 2008-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:24:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1633802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Genfic about Egon and Ray's friendship.  They visit a haunted house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haunted House

**Author's Note:**

> Didn't turn out like I planned, but still cute. Enjoy!
> 
> Written for scarletts_awry

 

 

"Haunted House"

It was a dark and stormy night. The rain was coming down so thick that the whole sky seemed to be falling, and the clouds kept the moon far out of reach. The road was barely visible through the grimy windshield of the Ecto-1, and Dr. Raymond Stantz was having a hard time staying in his lane, much to the chagrin of his friend and coworker, Dr. Egon Spengler, who might have hinted that one of his lab monkeys could have done better. Even his recently lobotomized lemur would have done a better job of adhering to state laws and spotting obvious road signs. 

The third member of their team, Dr. Peter Venkman, was busy with _lady problems_ that evening, leaving Ray and Egon all alone without the usual soundtrack of Peter's nonstop quips and humorous observations. It was nice to be able to carry on an intelligent conversation for a change, most of it centering around how they hoped the loss of the third beam and possible trap activator wouldn't hurt their chances of capturing tonight's target and how they wished Peter's brain wasn't controlled by his libido, but after the third almost-collision they were no longer speaking. 

Their destination was a beautiful old Victorian mansion, nestled uneasily in a neighborhood of boxy modernist cubes inhabited by gallery owners and art critics. Their client, Brent Harrison, waited for them on the sprawling front porch. As they parked the Ecto-1 and unloaded their equipment from the back, Ray could not help but notice that Brent was tapping his feet impatiently, and Egon observed as he checked his expensive watch seven times. He was a young urban professional, with manicured fingernails and hair right out of a shampoo commercial. When they finally approached him and he flashed them a fake smile, the two scientists exchanged a look that meant _surely, this is a terrible human being_. 

"Hey guys, thank you so much for coming out!" He said, his voice oozing with confidence. "Some weather we're having, am I right?" Egon agreed that they were indeed experiencing weather. An awkward silence followed before Brent regained his smile and jumped right back in. "Anyway, fellas, I am just so tired of this damn haunting mess. Completely inconvenient if you ask me. This is my mother's house, well, it will be _formerly_ my mother's house once I get it on the market. She's gone a bit..." he paused to make a few silly noises, cross his eyes, and twirl his fingers near his head. "...you know, _out there_ , and this old shack used to be her hobbyhorse and now it's just going to sit around and waste my time, so I go to try and clean it out a bit and wouldn't you know, there's a fucking _ghost_ in the parlor. He threw an obelisk at my shoulder and it's really hurt my tennis game and I want it _gone_." 

He finished with a sigh just to illustrate what a headache this ordeal has caused him. The Ghostbusters promised to do whatever they could, and Brent quickly took off in his red BMW, a satisfied smile on his face. 

"What a prick," murmured Ray as they entered the house. 

"In a more superstitious society, he would probably have been devoured by his enemies, with the hopes that they would gain his powers," Egon added.

"We should be so lucky."

The interior was perfectly restored, almost eerily so. The ornate wallpaper, garish green and red florals, looked fresh and bright. The carpets were plush and there was not a spec of dust to be found. "His poor mother really put everything into this place," Ray said as they slowly made their way to the main parlor, which was decorated in a shockingly bright shade of peacock blue. And in the middle of all the carefully selected period décor was the ghost of an old man in full Victorian-era dress, complete with a monocle and very nice shoes.

"A full body apparition!" Ray breathed, taking out several electronic gizmos from his pack to measure its energy output, heat readings, background sounds, and other scientific data. Unlike the other apparitions they encountered thus far, this ghost was not flighty, or agitated. It seemed polite, and stood there patiently while Ray and Egon made their calculations and furiously wrote down as many observations as possible. It was almost opaque! Its chest rose and fell softly, as if it was breathing! It not only noticed them, but smiled welcomingly! What a find. What a discovery.

"It seems to have retained its manners from its lifetime. Curious." Egon murmured, dipping a probe into the specter to collect an ectoplasm sample. "Excuse me, my good man, but you could have asked me first," the ghost protested sedately. Egon raised an eyebrow, but put the sample in a sterile container anyway. The ghost sighed, apparently resigned to his fate as a scientific curiosity. "I suppose I do not need that little bit, anyway. There is plenty more where it came from." 

"Sorry, Sir," Ray said, waving around a little antenna a few centimeters from the ghost's face. "But you are very fascinating," "Extremely fascinating," Egon added, "And not many apparitions such as yourself are so _lifelike_ , and even the ones that are move around so much that our readings are never this precise."

"I was a scientist, once, so I can appreciate your interest. However, it does surprise a fellow to have some of his matter, however curious in nature, to be scooped out of him." "What was your field of interest?" Egon queried, for he had many fields of interest. "Oh, everything, it seemed at times. This house was once books and instruments from wall to wall. The domestic trappings you see now are all the work of dear Emily Barnaby-Harrison, who bought it from some of my less appreciative heirs when she was a young woman."

"Sir, we consider ourselves to be experts in the science surrounding paranormal activity, but you are the first ghost we have encountered capable of complex dialogue and social interactions. Do you have any information that would tell us why?"

"No, I am afraid not. I suppose my awareness is my punishment, for caring so much for knowledge and so little for people. Now I have all the time in the world to gain the former but I shall never be able to gain what I shunned in life."

Egon and Ray did not know how to approach this problem, since their usual paranormal encounters did not involve morals or personal tragedy, and mostly revolved around locating an apparition, a brief tussle that may or may not include slime, and then a hasty capture. "You two are scientists, and bachelors probably. Do not end up like me, gentlemen. Do not end up alone." Ray and Egon exchanged glances. Were they alone? Was this a lesson specifically designed for them, by unseen powers that ruled the cosmos? It was like an old ghost story, the ones you'd read about as a child that always ended with a single rose discovered in a cemetery, or a wedding ring below the floorboards. The lack of predictable spectral mayhem made the scientists uncomfortable, and they turned from the ghost for a moment to have a brief discussion.

"We can't put him in the containment chamber like the others, Egon! He probably just sits around and reads newspapers all day, and I'd probably throw things at that schmuck Harrison too." Egon was a man of science and reason, and his heartstrings were not often tugged. However, he felt sympathy for the ghost, a fellow intellectual and seemingly sentient entity. A decision was made: the ghost stayed, and Brent Harrison was out of luck. 

They wrote him up a detailed note explaining that the house was not haunted, and that he was probably just a little paranoid. They recommended shock therapy, a long vacation, and avoiding the house at all costs. It was sloppy reasoning (and that alone made Egon cringe), but it seemed that not all ghosts were simple menaces. They parted ways with the old gentleman, wishing him luck and telling him to mind his temper, so his Yuppie caretaker wouldn't summon the Jesuits or turn the lot into condominiums. 

As they rode back to headquarters, still silent and swerving all over the road, each man wondered if he was alone in the world, like the lonely ghost. And independent of one another, but roughly at the same time, they realized that though they may be bachelors, and collect dubious things like tarot cards or fungal spores, they would always have each other. And a friend you can trust around paranormal apparitions and the nuclear-powered technology that captures them is not something you can find in every lifetime.

 


End file.
